


Treasures and Raw Materials

by esama



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-24 03:42:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14347260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: "Damn. I really wanted that vacation in Bahamas. I wish we all would've gotten that vacation in Bahamas. We deserved it. We all deserved better."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Abandoned work  
> Tags changed to accurately represent what's there rather than what was intended.

Waking up after death doesn't come as big a surprise as it should. Or maybe it shouldn't be a surprise at all at this point – Desmond's life has taken so many weird turns lately that maybe it's just par for the course that even death doesn't work like it should at this point. Still, he hadn't really expected it. He hadn't expected to survive.

He'd felt himself _dying_ under the onslaught of power going out from the Grand Temple – he'd been a conduit to it as much as its trigger, really, a loose wire sparking away and somehow keeping the whole thing together just long enough for it to work. Or at least he hopes it worked – it did something anyway, he could feel it, and could feel himself burning inside out to make it happen, so, hopefully…

Juno had lied, too. There will be no pain, his _ass_.

Desmond closes his eyes for a moment, enjoying the decisive lack of that pain now. He feels kind of nice actually – warm, with the sun shining all over him, warming the darker cloth of his jeans and making him slightly sweaty in his hoodie, but it's nice. The cave had always been so goddamn cold, cold and damp and just generally unpleasant. Sleeping in volcanic glass under the constant sensation of being _stared_ at… no one had a pleasant night's sleep there, Desmond doesn't think. He certainly hadn't slept a single night without nightmares there.

No volcanic glass here, though – no arching cave roof or jagged edges of ancient structures and ancient destruction. Instead, there is the warmth of the sun, gentle breeze, sand under his hands and sound of waves slowly crashing up shore…

It takes a moment to register how weird that is. And then the familiarity of it crashes down on him like a pile of bricks and Desmond groans with dismay and covers his face with his hands. He knows this – waking up in sand listening to waves. Goddamnit.

Animus Island? Really? _Really_?  Is this going to become a thing now – he passes out under some First Civ bullshit tech, another Piece of Eden in another goddamn temple, and someone shoves him into the Animus?

For a moment Desmond just breathes into his hands, feeling a bit like shouting, or maybe like laughing. Then the strangeness of his hand catches up with him and he lifts them off his face, to stare at them. The left one is as he remembers it, a little calloused, sand under his fingernails, tattoo on his arm. The right one though…

It's all black – like a lump of coal, something burnt to a crisp. Except it isn't actually burnt – his skin is still soft and supple, he can move his fingers, it doesn't even hurt. It's just… black.

Shakily, Desmond pulls his sleeve down as far as he can, to see how far the colour goes. His other hand is fine, so it has to stop somewhere, right? The blackness goes all the way down his wrist, his arm, under the wrist blade and past it. When Desmond turns his arm under the glare of the sun, there is a flash of gold, gleaming on the blackened skin. Golden circuits, running along the length of his arm, under the blade, over the back of his wrist, down to his finger joints.

First Civilisation circuitry.

Desmond breathes in and out, determined not to panic as he turns his hand, watching the circuitry reflect the sun’s light. Then he grabs his arm around the elbow, where the black starts fading and lightens into his normal skin tone. It feels normal. The burn – or infection, whatever it is – fades like a gradient over his bicep, the last gleam of gold fading away and into normal skin.

For a moment Desmond tries tugging and pinching at the blackened skin. It feels normal under his fingers, warm and supple and just like regular skin. Except for the fact that it's black. And covered in golden circuitry.

He has no idea what to think. The Eye did this to him, that much is obvious, but… how, why, and what the hell does it mean? Is his, what, Animus avatar infected somehow? Is that what this is, some sort of First Civ program or pattern – part of their mythical Calculation? Or something else? He has no damn clue.

In the end, he just lowers his hand and then tries pushing himself up to lean on his elbow, to look around to see what the hell is going on here.

He's definitely on a beach, though it's not exactly like the one he remembers from Animus Island. This beach isn't the rocky, weird mess of textures like the last one – this one is just sand, beautiful white sand that stretches on for several feet before slipping under crystal clear water. For a while Desmond just stares down the shoreline, blinking at how bright it all is. Animus Island was perpetually under a cloud layer – it seemed always like it was just about to rain. Here it's nothing but clear blue skies and ocean for as far as the eye can see.

Turning a little, Desmond looks behind him over his shoulder. No floating pillars or rocks anywhere, no blocks – instead the sand rises up into a bank of grass and rock and foliage. There are palm trees above him, some bushes, ferns – all of it vibrantly green. Palm trees?

This isn't Animus Island. Even Rebecca's constantly updating Animus isn't this pretty – there's always that slightly foggy quality to it, that uncanny _unrealness_ of simulation that she couldn't quite smooth out. This, this is too bright, too brilliant – he can feel the wind, hear the waves, smell the ocean. And that's something Animus can't do – it can't do smells.

Slowly Desmond rises to sit up on his knees, staring at the bushes and palm trees – seriously, palm trees? Where has he ever been where there's palm trees? Constantinople maybe, but… Then his eye catches something to the side of him. Desmond turns to look and he can _feel_ the expression draining from his face.

There's a line of bodies lying next to him – one after another lying in a row like someone had just placed them there. There's three in total, their clothes sandy and slightly waterlogged. He knows them all.

Lucy Stillman in her familiar leather jacket and jeans – a hole in her shirt front, right where Desmond put it. Clay Kaczmarek with his sleeves rolled all the way up and sand in his hair – his bare hands gleam with gold, spilling from his fingers like blood. And finally Daniel Cross, looking hot in his many layers and combat boots – golden circuitry on his temple like the scar of a gunshot wound

They're just lying there, asleep or unconscious, or… dead.

Desmond swallows, looks around just in case there are more people to be found – if Vidic is here, he's going to lose it. As far as he can see, there's no one else there, though – just him and the three others. All of whom _are_ dead, too, in the real world. Two of them by his own hand, and Clay…

Shit, so he really is dead after all? And this place is some sort of… afterlife representation? A literal paradise island? The place does look lovely, if nothing else, but it's… yeah, really, really not what he expected.

Desmond stands up, wavering a little before finding his footing on the sand, brushing granules of it off his shoulders and back as he does. Then he goes to check up on Lucy crouching down beside her and hesitating for a moment before leaning in to check. She's breathing, and her heart is beating – so, alive then, or what passes for alive here anyway. There's no blood on her, she doesn't look injured, but…

Wincing a little, Desmond tugs her shirt from the edge of her jeans’ waistline, to check on her stomach.

There's the hole he put into her gut – filled in with gold like someone had patched her up with metal. Around the seam of gold there is that golden circuitry again, like infection radiating from festering wound but all techno.

"What the hell," Desmond mutters, holding the edge of her shirt out of the way to take a closer look – and that's when she moves.

Lucy comes to with an enormous gasp, like drawing breath for the very first time since dying – her whole body convulses with it, her shoulders coming off the sand. She grabs at Desmond's hand, grabbing him by the wrist and then she looks at him, her eyes wide, confused.

"… Desmond?" she asks.

"Hi," Desmond answers, wary, leaning back a little – her grip on his wrist slackens a little and then grips on harder, to keep him from pulling back.

"You – you stabbed me?" Lucy asks and then there's another sound.

Daniel Cross doesn't so much come to as he comes _swinging_ – jumping to his feet and crouching down, arms held up, instantly battle ready. He looks around as Desmond and Lucy stare at him over Clay's still unconscious body – Desmond can see the guy take in their surroundings, the sand, the ocean, them.

"You son of a – BITCH!"

And then Cross is attacking him. Clay grunts out as the man pretty much scrambles over him and Lucy hurriedly kicks away from Cross, getting out of the way as the man launches himself at Desmond, his expression crazed and confused, gold gleaming on his temples as he tries to claw at Desmond's face.

Desmond moves automatically before his conscious mind has the chance to act – grabbing Cross by his nearest outstretched wrist and tugging the man forward, hard. Cross is still confused, in awkward position, not balanced properly – tug is all that's needed to get him off his feet and to his knees and right into the ground. Before he has chance to recover, Desmond moves over him, twisting the wrist in his hand as he goes and pinning it into middle of Cross's shoulder blades, pinning him into the sand completely.

Cross fights him, kicking the sand and cursing, trying to hit him with his still free arm – so Desmond pins that down too, grabbing Cross by the shoulder and shoving him into the sand. "Stay down," Desmond orders, "Or I'll break your spine."

"You bastard!" Cross growls, struggling for a moment, trying to push up from the sand, but he can't get the leverage – Desmond is basically sitting on his back now and no amount of kicking is going to get him up. "You son of a – fucker, you stabbed me! You _killed_ me! How – how – _how_?!"

Desmond grimaces and looks up. Lucy is staring at them in confusion and shock and Clay is coming to now, lying on his side on the sand and staring at them with a lost look on his face.

"What is going on?" Lucy asks confusedly. "What is this? Desmond?"

"17?" Clay asks and lifts a hand. It's soaked in gold – his fingertips are almost solid like he'd dipped them in paint, and the veins running down along his fingers, through his palm, down his wrist, they're all golden too like mineral veins in pale stone. On his wrists and arms there are long gashes of gleaming metal – cuts and wounds, patched in with gold. All around them circuitry flows every which way like water.

"17, what the hell did you do?" Clay asks.

"Don't look at me," Desmond snaps while Cross kicks at the sand, writhing under him and trying to get loose. "I have no idea – I just woke up, same as you."

"Let go of me!" Cross growls, wringing his shoulders and pretty much only succeeding to dig his own face into the sand. "Let me up, you son of a bitch, I'm going to kill you, you –"

"Settle down," Desmond snaps. "I'm not letting you up until you do and stop trying to fight."

"Fuck you!"

Lucy is shakily checking her stomach – finding the golden stab wound, the circuitry. While she touches it in horrified confusion, Clay jumps to his feet, checking over his arms as he does, running his golden fingers over the wounds.

"This is my body, Desmond," Clay says. "I remember these – I made these. I made these. I remember. But I shouldn't remember this – that wasn't – this isn't –!"

Desmond looks at him warily, while Lucy gets up to her feet too. Cross is still struggling to get free, clawing at the sand with his free hand but unable to reach at Desmond as his shoulder is pinned down. Desmond is almost grateful for it – it's giving him something to do, something to concentrate, rather than just the confusion.

"What did you do?" Clay asks, dropping his arms and looking around them in the beach. "Desmond, what the hell did you do?"

"I didn't do anything," Desmond says and as Cross bucks under him to try and throw him off the man's back, turns his attention to the man. "I told you, I just woke up, same as you."

"We're dead," Clay says, snapping his golden fingers and making Lucy look up. Clay points at Desmond. "We're _all_ dead – aren't we? And I bet you were the last one alive, weren't you? Process of elimination – _we_ couldn't do shit, dead as we were. So it had to be you. What did you do?"

Desmond shakes his head. "I didn't – I just died," he says. "I used the damn – Grand Temple and I died in the process. That's pretty much it."

"Grand Temple?" Lucy asks, while Cross's struggles cease a little, the man turning his head a little to look at Desmond from the corner of his narrowed eye.

"Yeah – the First Civilisation's grand way of saving the world from the solar flare," Desmond says, looking down at Cross, but not letting go of him just yet. "Activating it killed me. I don't even know if it worked." He nods down to his right hand, black throughout. "This happened and then I woke up here."

"And what did it do?" Clay asks, shuffling closer and looking at him closely. "Did she tell you what the device did – do you have any idea how it works?"

"Not a damn clue," Desmond mutters. "I don't even know if it did, if it did _anything_. Towards the end we found out that the place was Juno's prison, it's where Minerva and Jupiter chained her consciousness to keep her contained – that using the temple would release her. But I had to use it – I couldn't just… let the flare happen."

"What the hell are you people _talking about_?" Cross asks and wrings his shoulders again, more a sign of annoyance now than actual attempt of getting free. "The flare – you mean, the solar flare? Is that the shit you were prophesied to stop?"

"What?" Desmond asks and then frowns. "Prophesied – how do you know about that?"

"It's just a fucking solar flare," Cross growls and turns his head away, resting his chin on the sand. "Most it's going to do is knock out few power grids and bust up some satellites. Prophesied saviour _my ass_."

Desmond scowls at him, confused. "What?" he asks again. "How do you – if you know about the prophecy then you know it was going to be worse than that. You know how the First Civilisation died, right?"

"Hah," Cross scoffs. "Shit," he says then and tries to push up again. "Fuck – get off me, asshole."

"Did the event happen already?" Lucy asks, frowning, resting a hand on her stomach. "How long ago…?" she can't seem to put it into actual words down.

"Desmond," Clay says sharply, crouching down beside him and Cross. "What did the Grand Temple _do_?"

Desmond shakes his head. "I don't know, exactly," he admits. "Juno told me about six methods they tried – solar towers, shields, sending the Apples into space, the Calculations, making themselves better bodies, preserving their minds in computers or something… I don't know which one the Temple was, though. It was going to save everybody, though, so I had to –"

"But how?" Clay says, reaching and grabbing him by the shoulder. "Was it one of the earlier methods – or was it Minerva's? Was the Grand Temple Minerva's _Eye_?!"

"… yeah, yeah, that's what she called it," Desmond says, frowning, trying to recall. "Yeah. Minerva was there in the end, she said it was her focus, that she built it – the Eye, that was it. But Juno turned it against her, against everyone, used it to preserve herself and manipulate events…"

Clay's mouth opens, closes, and then he plonks down to it on his ass on the sand. "Holy shit, Desmond," he says.

"What?" Desmond demands uneasily, while Lucy looks at them warily and Cross tilts his head to look up over his shoulder again.

"The Eye," Clay says. "The literal first Eye, the Eye behind every other divine Eye metaphor and symbol and there's a lot of them – and they're all based on Minerva's Eye. Eye of Divinity and all that crap!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Desmond says.

"The Calculations – with the Eye you can see the Calculations," Clay snaps, and waves his hands a little in frustration. "And the Calculations are Everything. _Everything_. If it works as advertised, it's literal Omniscience. And to use it – do you see?"

Desmond frowns a little at that. "I really don't."

"What goes hand in hand with Omniscience, you idiot?" Clay asks impatiently. "Omnipotence! Seeing the Calculations is one thing – but _manipulating_ them… That's Omnipotence. If you _used_ the Eye it means that for a brief moment there, you were literally a god."

For a moment no one says anything, Lucy staring at them in confusion and suspicion and Cross glaring at them from the sand, suspiciously silent. Then Desmond scoffs. "Definitely didn't feel like it," he mutters. "It kind of felt like just dying to me."

"Don't doubt that – that's more power than even the Isu can handle," Clay scoffs and then lifts his knees up, resting his elbows on them. "And just looking at the Calculations can fry your mind in no time – I should fucking know. But if you used the Eye then you probably did this," Clay says and waves around them.

"I… made the island?" Desmond mutters, confused.

"Hell, maybe, you might've," Clay says and lifts a gold covered hand. "You definitely made _us_. I mean look at this shit?" he says and runs a finger along a gash of gold on his wrist. "This is where I cut myself when I killed myself. I'm all patched up now, huh?"

Desmond really doesn't know what to say to that. Lucy is lifting her shirt again and looking at the gash on her belly, running a finger over the seam of gold.

"Get off me," Cross says under Desmond. "I'm not going to – let me up, asshole, I want to see if I got a fucking thing of gold on me."

"If you try to attack me again I will put you down," Desmond says warily and slowly releases him, shifting off his back. Cross makes it a point to elbow him on his way up, before sitting on his knees and starting to strip, pulling off his brace and then shrugging off his jacket. Desmond is distracted by the tattoo on the guy's right arm – a very familiar looking tattoo – and so doesn't notice the seam of gold on the guy's neck until a moment later.

"Fuck," Cross mutters, reaching back and running his finger over the gash, the circuitry gleaming under his fingers. "It's there, fucking isn't it?"

"Yeah," Desmond agrees, frowning. That's where he stabbed Cross – that's where he killed him. Through the muscle, between the vertebrate, as quick and painless a death he could give the guy. "You, uh, got gold on your temples too. Circuit patterns."

"What the _fuck_?" Cross mutters and then swings to his feet, grabbing his clothes as he does. "What the actual _fuck_ is going on here?!"

"I would like to know that too," Lucy says, looking at Desmond and Clay. "What _is_ this, Desmond? You – did this? You brought all of us back? _Why_?"

"Guilt maybe?" Clay asks, though he too looks a bit wary as he looks at Desmond. "All the things you could've done… Literally all powerful and you do this?"

Desmond rubs awkwardly at his blackened wrist, running his fingers over the circuitry there. No seams of gold for him – just burns and circuitry. Then he shakes his head, pushing himself up to his feet with a sigh. Clay does the same beside him, rubbing his mostly golden hands together. It really looks like Clay is just bleeding gold, there's so much there.

They're all staring at him in anticipation, even Cross is giving him expectant, suspicious looks as he pulls his shirt back on. They're all waiting for an answer and he has nothing to give them. "I…" he says and sighs. "I don't know. I didn't mean to." Yeah, that sounds lame even to him.

"Well, you did anyway," Clay says and tugs his fingers into his own armpits, probably to hide them from his own view. "It probably wouldn't even take much, while you're in there, using that thing. Stray thought might be enough, when you're dealing with that much power."

"What were you thinking, Desmond?" Lucy asks – it sound half like an accusation and half like a plea.

"That I really wanted a vacation?" Desmond offers awkwardly and looks at the beautiful beach they're all standing on. Clay scowls at him while Lucy shakes her head, dissatisfied, and Cross lets out a quiet snarl of annoyance. "Kind of looks like a prime vacation destination, doesn't it?"

"Desmond," Lucy says quietly.

Desmond sighs and looks down. "That we all deserved better. That's what I was thinking, when I died. That we four… we deserved better than we got."

It's pretty damn telling that none of them can argue with that.


	2. Chapter 2

She'd died.

Lucy had been prepared for that, at least, she thought she was. It had always been a possibility, ever since the beginning – ever since William Miles took a look at her, only fifteen year old at the time, and marked her down for a mission one might hesitate to send an adult on. Two years of training and then she was cut loose – and ever since then and even before that, death had been a very real possibility. Any moment, someone might discover her. Any moment, someone might take a look at her, and get rid of her.

There had been moments when she'd thought it would come to it. Closest was when the Animus was finally finished, the version Abstergo eventually would think was the finished version – they got so close to disposing of her…

And after that it just got worse. Death had always been a close companion but after that, after she'd bent at the knee and bowed to Vidic's demands, taken that oath, made those promises and betrayed all she'd thought she'd stood for, well… when you're standing against assassins rather than for them, death becomes damn near certainty. Abstergo might be winning now, but Templars had had moments when they'd thought they were winning before. Somehow, regardless of how well they think they've stomped them out, Assassin's always surge up again, rebuild their numbers, and strike back.

Like the tide rocking the beach in front of her, the Assassin order keeps coming back. It only takes the one, to rebuild it from ground up. Just look at Ezio.

The closer they got to the Apple, the more of the Truth was revealed through Subject 16 – now glaring at her over the sand – the more certain death became, really. Lucy had almost felt it creeping up to her – that deadline in the back of her head, screaming that time was getting short, Desmond was getting better, Shaun was starting to look between the lines, Rebecca was getting bolder about asking what happened at Abstergo… any moment now, they'd figure it out. Any moment, they'd demand answers.

And what could she give them? An excuse? The moment in her old, ransacked apartment, windows broken and computers smashed, her clothes torn, forced onto her knees with a gun on her head while Vidic stands half in her defence, half ready to execute her, _"Time to make a choice, Miss Stillman,"_ he'd said and she'd made it. She'd _made_ it.

She'd died.

Judging from what Desmond said, the solar event happened – so it had been at least seventy two days since she died. Two and half months. She's been dead for two and half months. She'd died and world continued on without her, the solar event came, and Desmond figured out how to stop it, and in stopping it he'd…

Does he not know then?

Lucy sits on the edge of the grass bank that rises from the white sand, watching the others. Desmond occasionally looks at her, but his expression is too tight and confused to tell what he's really thinking. 16 definitely knows, though – he's glaring at her from the sand, wringing his mostly golden hands and just glaring at her and if looks could kill…

Lucy can't even blame him.

 _We four deserved better than we got_ , Desmond said. That's… something, right?

"Shit, shit, _shit,_  work, you piece of _shit,_ " Daniel mutters, and Lucy looks up to find him almost strangling his smartphone. "I don't suppose any of you bastards have a way to contact people?" he asks then, shoving his phone into his pockets. "Your assassin friends maybe?"

"Nope," 16 says flatly. "And if I did I definitely wouldn't give it to you."

"We need to get out of here, asshole. How about you fucking check," Daniel snaps. "You, 17, you got anything'"

Desmond makes a face and then checks his pockets too before taking off the slanted backpack he has on, crouching down to look it through, emptying everything out to the sand. He comes away with notepad, some plastic bags, socks, climbing gloves, what looks like granola bars, a bottle, rope and carabiners, a small med kit, some wrappers, receipt – and finally, a phone.

Daniel makes an aborted motion towards Desmond, stopping when Desmond glares at him. There's a moment of tension, 16 standing up slowly to take Desmond's side and in the end Daniel stays back, grimacing as Desmond checks the phone over.

"Anything?" 16 asks warily.

"Nothing," Desmond says, flicking through the settings probably. "But this doesn't have a SIM card anyway – couldn't risk it. I just have it to take photos. Lucy?" he then asks, looking up. "Do you have a phone that works?"

"No," Lucy says, though she goes through her pockets anyway. She has some things – wallet, keys, few memory sticks, glow sticks. Five tampons and couple of pad's in a container, gloves in her jacket pocket, some spare change… no phone, no headset. She hadn't brought those with them to the church, thinking… "Nothing," she says, running her hands over the pockets of her jeans. She can feel the pocket knife she carries there, but doesn't take it out.

"Shit, that's just fucking great," Daniel mutters, throwing his coat over his arm and glaring at Desmond. "Where the fuck did you bring us with your mumbo-jumbo?"

"No idea," Desmond says and starts repacking his backpack, checking the water bottle before putting it back in. "Bahamas probably?"

"Well, it looks tropical enough," 16 says, looking at Lucy – or rather past her at the forest behind her. "Why Bahamas?"

Desmond shrugs, turning to face the forest. "I figured it would be a good place to relax after all the caves," he admits and rests hands on his hips – one healthy and tattooed, one black and speckled with gold. Burned, Lucy thinks, and somehow manages to not touch the bit of gold on her belly.

"We should probably look around," Desmond says. "This place seems large enough – maybe there's people here."

Lucy looks over her shoulder at the forest, frowning a little. It looks… pretty untouched. "Do you think there is?" she asks and stands up. "If you brought us here, you could have brought us to a tourist resort but you didn't, so…" and all things considered, going to a tourist resort wouldn't be the safest thing to do for a man like Desmond Miles.

"Yeah," Desmond agrees wryly and shakes his head. "Probably best we look around anyway. Even if there's no one here… we'll still need a way out."

16 rises from the sand, rolling to his feet like a lazy cat, while Daniel looks between them, eyes narrowed.

"Stillman," Daniel says and grabs his coat from the sad. "With me."

"Ah yes, Templars going one way and Assassins the other, that seems like _great_ idea," 16 says sarcastically, pushing his hands into his pockets. "You'll get a chance to plot our eventual murder in peace, how wonderful."

"Yeah, I think it might be better if we stick together," Desmond agrees slowly, looking between Lucy and Daniel. "For now at least."

"Should've thought of that before you brought us back from the fucking dead," Daniel says with scoff and turns to the forest. "I don't work for you, asshole. Stillman, come _on_."

Lucy hesitates. Daniel has his hidden blade – he's not even trying to hide the bracer on his left arm. He probably has a knife somewhere, too – in his boot maybe. Desmond has a hidden blade too, but it doesn't look like 16 has a weapon at all… All things considered, not half bad odds, if it comes down to it. Desmond has the skills of Ezio Auditore at least, but if they caught him off guard, maybe…

Desmond killed her. She can still feel the echo if it, the blade sliding into her stomach, puncturing through skin and flesh and intestine… He'd been fighting against it, she remembers that, every step he'd taken towards her had been a struggle, like he hadn't wanted to do it, like he was doing it against his will. But he'd still done it. He'd killed her. And judging by the look he's giving her now, he does know. He knows she'd betrayed them.

And he'd killed her.

"Stillman," Daniel snaps. "Pick up the fucking pace, we're getting out of here."

"No," Lucy says and rests a hand on her stomach, looking at Desmond, who is watching her, his expression tight and inscrutable. He tenses and 16's eyes narrow dangerously.

" _Stillman_ ," Daniel growls impatiently.

Lucy shakes her head and turns away. Desmond killed her – but Desmond also brought her back. "I'm going that way," she says, motioning down the beach. "Alone."

And then she does just that, a finger digging into the hole in her shirt. She can feel them staring after her, can hear Daniel growling something before he marches into the bush – but no one calls after her.

"We'll meet up in here, alright?!" Desmond then shouts. "If we find anything, or… or if we don't, we'll all circle back here, where we all woke up!"

Lucy doesn't answer – she just walks away. Her steps are clumsy at first – some aftereffect of the whole thing, maybe? It doesn't matter, her steps grow stronger as she goes, she grows firmer in her decision. Not much of one is it, but she's going her own way. For the first time in seven – nine, if you count the training – years, she's making a choice for herself.

And it only took a death and resurrection to get there.

* * *

 

Seventy two days dead. It doesn't feel like it. Her body looks fine aside from the bit of gold patching her up from the stab wound – she looks healthy and whole, not like she's been decomposing for two and half months. So, safe to say she probably hadn't been – Desmond hadn't plucked her from her grave or whatever ditch she'd been left in.

He'd plucked her from her moment of death, probably. If that's even how it works. It might've been that he'd rebuild her by the pattern – that universe had somehow stored Lucy Stillman's blueprints and somehow Desmond had used his momentary Unlimited Power to reconstruct her. It hadn't re-grown her missing ring finger, though, and giving her a pocket full of random stuff, things she'd been carrying when she'd died, that's a little odd if he'd rebuilt her from nothing or however it works.

Lucy runs her fingers through her bangs, pushing them off her face as the ocean breeze tugs at them and looks down the length of the beach. She can't quite get past it – she'd died, she'd died, she'd felt herself _die._  The pain, the cold, how breathing became a struggle – she'd stared at Desmond until her final breath. He'd never known – he'd just lied there, unconscious. The act of killing her had knocked him out and she'd been left staring at him until she could see nothing and –

"God," Lucy murmurs and stops walking just to take a moment to breathe. She'd died. She'd _died._  And Desmond had resurrected her.

 _Why_?

Resurrecting 16 Lucy can almost understand, though it seems now like Desmond and 16 know each other better than just as numbers, as Subjects – at code hidden in Animus. There's a story there that Lucy doesn't have the energy to try and figure out. Resurrecting 16 after all he'd gone through, the similarity he and Desmond have, that makes sense. But Lucy? And _Daniel Cross_?

Two Assassin traitors, each worse than the other in their own ways. Templars of the worst sort. Why resurrect them? Just because… because he felt guilty? He'd killed her, and from what she'd heard he'd killed Daniel too…

_We deserved better._

Lucy continues walking. It's so strange, to be in a place like this all of sudden – so long they'd spent underground in Monteriggioni, and she'd died underground too. It's almost agoraphobia inducing, to suddenly have all this open air all around her – open sky, open sand, endless, crystal blue ocean… It's beautiful and like nothing she'd thought she'd ever see.

The crash of the waves and the rustling of leaves in the breeze should probably be soothing, but all it's doing is confusing her more. It's like… like a paradise island, isn't it, all untouched beauty, pristine and so clear and – and… and she isn't sure she deserves it.

If someone killed her, she's almost glad it was Desmond. Only one who had more right would've been 16 – god, she still can't think of his name. 16 or 15, they definitely had the right – but she's glad it was Desmond. Gladder still, that it wasn't by his choice – that he'd just been…the tool or instrument of it, but not really the instigator. However it went down, it was a better death than she'd expected to get.

Better death that she'd almost gotten, before Vidic had stood over her and tugged her across that thin red line.

Lucy walks, her shoes digging into the soft white sand. Her foot slips a little every so often, and sand gets into her shoes and eventually she stops to take them and her socks off, rolling her trouser legs up to mid calf before continuing. The sand is warm and soft underfoot – it doesn't feel quite real.

And her mind circles back to it – the fact that she'd died.

The bit of gold in her belly, it feels like nothing – that's what bothers her the most. She can't even feel it – when she runs her fingers over it, it's like a normal bit of skin, if she's not looking at it she can't even tell the difference. But when she looks, there it is – a bit of what looks like solid gold, gleaming in sunlight, surrounded by fractal pattern of circuitry, surrounding the wound side like… like a strange golden tattoo. It feels like skin, healthy and warm and soft – but it reflects light like metal.

Does it go _in_ too? Are her muscles and intestine repaired with gold too – is there a vein of gold running in her guts now, everywhere where Desmond's blade had torn her open? What would it look like under microscope? Are the golden part cells or… or maybe some sort of nanoscopic machinery? And if it is organic, her own cellular structure somehow turned… artificial or however it works, what would its genetic structure be like?

What is _her_ genetic structure like right now? Had what happened changed it? Is she still human? Running her finger over that bit of gold, Lucy thinks about Desmond's black arm and 16, all but _bleeding_ gold all over his hands. Their genetic structure must be different now, somehow. Daniel too, his gash of gold was sizable. Bigger than hers anyway. All things considered, it seems she got off lightly.

… except for the fact that she'd died.

The sound of the waves has changed – something breaks the waves before they hit the shore. Lucy stops and then looks up. It doesn't make sense at first, what she's seeing – she's almost certain she's imagining it. But the longer she looks the more detail she can see – the breaks in the wood, the shreds of sail, the hanging ropes, the partial name on the side, _Santa Mar_ …

A shipwreck.

* * *

 

Lucy is not the only one who found something.

"Looked like a campsite," Desmond says, once he and 16 are finally out of the woods – no sign of Daniel, but Lucy honestly hadn't even expected him. "Abandoned long ago maybe – but there was a spot for a campfire and looked like they'd tried to build a tent and stuff, but it's all collapsed now. There were some boxes there too, wooden crates – some stuff in them, nothing useful though. Lot of empty bottles and rotten cloth."

"Nothing _modern,"_  16 says with his arms folded, staring at Lucy hard. "Not so much as a _screw_. No plastic either, and all the bottles looked like they'd been made by hand, not by machines. And, can't forget, we found a damn sword."

"A sword," Lucy repeats slowly

"Rusted through," Desmond says and looks at the ocean, his expression a little tense, a little worried.

Lucy frowns, pushing her hands into her pockets. Sword, no modern materials, no plastic – and the shipwreck she'd found. An old sailing ship, all wood and rope and cloth with rusted bits of metal… and what looked like cannons, sunken into the rotting, waterlogged wood.

"Not in Kansas anymore," 16 says and kicks at the sand. "So, it's not so much a question of _where_ anymore – but when. When the _hell_ did you bring us, 17?"

Desmond shakes his head. "I have no idea," he says quietly. "I just wanted to go somewhere where… none of it mattered. I don't know."

Lucy bows her head a little. She's no historian but she'd watched over Shaun's shoulder enough to figure some things out. Wooden sailing ship could be explained away with some work – people do historical re-enactments  all the time, and there are still historical sailing ships that are still in tip top condition, serving as museum pieces and such… but find one of them in middle of what looks to be _nowhere_ , and with no remains of anything modern nearby?

"Did you go through the ship?" Desmond asks, looking at her.

Lucy shakes her head. "I got just close enough to see what I could on top, but that's it. It didn't look very stable – the wood looked rotten, I wasn't sure it could hold my weight." And it was a little distance from the shoreline, she hadn't really felt like swimming in the only set of clothes she has – and even less like getting naked for it.

"We should check it out, with more detail," 16 says, looking at Desmond. "Might be enlightening. Might even give us a date."

Lucy looks at Desmond too, but says nothing. It feels like she should argue, maybe – that they're all accepting this too easily. Being not just in wrong place, but wrong time… that's ludicrous, right? But then again, they're already back from the dead. What's little time travel on top of it?

Desmond looks away, at the forest, pressing his lips together for a moment. Then he looks at Lucy. "Cross called you by name – he knows you."

Lucy nods slowly. "He worked for Vidic, same as I did," she says quietly. "We didn't exactly work together, but we ran into each other every so often." Though she can't say she ever enjoyed the man's company. On Vidic's orders Daniel had never been anything but cordial with her – what passes for cordial for him anyway – but that didn't stop Daniel from being… what he is. The less she saw of him, the better in her books, really.

"Do you know what he's going to do?" Desmond asks quietly.

Lucy shakes her head. "I don't know him that well," she admits and looks down. "He's…" unstable, extremely, _terribly_ unstable, "troubled, but intelligent. It makes him unpredictable."

"Tch, that's one word for it. You know who he is, right?" 16 says, scowling, looking at Desmond. "You know _what_ he is – what he _did._  Desmond, why the hell did you bring _him_ back?"

Desmond bows his head a little. "I…" he says and then shakes his head. "Rebecca showed me his files, after the first time we ran into him. I don't think I could… just leave it. Knowing what happened to him, what they did to him."

Lucy lowers her eyes and then closes them with a sigh, a pulse of pain running through her core. Damn it, she thinks.

Desmond killed her – it would be so much easier if she could feel even a tiny bit angry about that. But she can't – he's too damn kind for her to manage it. He's always been, always been so soft and kind, so damn _accepting_. Even Shaun hadn't been able to hate Desmond, and he'd damn well tried his best – and if Shaun fails, what chance does she have? Hell, even Vidic liked Desmond, despite everything.

"Desmond, you're an Assassin," Clay says flatly. "By this point you should damn well know some people are beyond saving. It's not just dangerous – it's fucking _stupid_."

He's looking at Lucy when he says it, though.

Desmond lifts his head and looks at him and then says, quietly, "Then it is."

"And you think that's fine?" 16 demands. "Risking yourself, risking everything – risking the whole damn _timeline_ just to… whatever it is you're hoping to accomplish here? Do you have any idea what's at stake here?"

"Probably not," Desmond admits. "And hell is paved with good intentions and all that. I'd still rather try to do the right thing – than the easy thing."

16 lets out a scoff at that while Lucy hugs herself, uneasy and torn and oddly warm. Then Desmond shakes his head and runs his blackened fingers through his hair. "In either case, Cross is not here," he says. "So let's go check out that shipwreck. Maybe we'll learn something."

"If Cross kills us all, please remember that I told you so," 16 mutters and stands up. "Please let it be the last thing you think about."

"I'm sure it will be," Desmond snorts and turns to Lucy. Then he smiles, easy and sure – and utterly oblivious, as per usual. God, he's so _naïve_ , isn't he, hopelessly raw and all too trusting.

Lucy leans into it as helplessly as she did in Monteriggioni, almost guiltily taking comfort in still being a person who somehow deserves that smile. How, she has no idea – but there he is, Desmond Miles, smiling at her.

Desmond pats her shoulder. "Come on," he says. "Let's go play pirates."


	3. Chapter 3

It's nice, having a body again. The fact that it's his own actual body, that was a bit of a surprise, a massive shock really – but Clay is good with those. Sure, he could go on getting lost in his head like Lucy seems to be, just floating on the surface of his own confusion – but he's been without a body longer than any of them, he damn well knows how to appreciate having one again.

And, _damn_ , is it nice to be able to feel things again. Even if those things are water soaking through his clothing and sand getting into his shoes, all sensations are made new and novel again by their long absence. It's almost enough to make him forgive Desmond for being a massive idiot. Not quite, but almost.

"Anything?" Desmond calls from his end of the shipwreck, somewhere amidst the cracking of the rotten wood and crash of the waves against the shoals.

"Eh," Clay answers. "We got some materials here we can probably use – some rope, some cloth, plenty of wood if we can harvest it. Bits and bobs of metal."

"Anything with _writing_ on it, Clay. Something that might tell us the year, you know?"

Clay scoffs. As if _he'd_ forgotten to look.

The shipwreck is a piece of the past. Clay's forays into history have been mostly concentrated on the more recent periods – Ezio is as far as he'd ever gone back, and he doesn't have that much experience with the Age of Sail aside from some ships seen from ports – all his ancestors kept their feet on the solid ground for the most part. Well, there had been Shao Jun, but even she did most of her traveling over land, not by sea. So there's not enough data to pinpoint an age to the ship.

Could be anywhere from 15th to mid 19th century, really. The name implies southern Europe – the lack of _la_ in the beginning is a bit of a relief, though. _La Santa Maria de la Inmaculada Concepción_ , that would've been Columbus' ship. That would've been a mind fuck and a half. Still, Spanish, or Portuguese maybe…

Clay perches awkwardly on the broken set of stairs, looking down to the water that covers what was once upon a time below decks. There are some debris floating there, broken bits of wood, barrels, some nets, ropes. More bits of wood… all waterlogged and weathered – the ship has been here for some time. Months at least – though not years. If it had been years, the ocean probably would've rocked the ship apart by now…

There, a small cask with the writing on it. Clay peers into the darkness and then takes an awkward step into the water, reaching for the cask. It takes some effort – and a lot of splashing – to get the thing to come to him, but he manages eventually, lifting the little barrel-shaped container off the water and turning it in his hand.

Handcrafted, like everything else – wood that's been worked with hand planer, and there are hammer marks on the metal rings. The writing looks a bit like a label, like someone had stamped it on – a lot of the small text is all worn away, but he can still make out the biggest words. Tobacco, San Juan, and a number.

"1713!" Clay shouts out of the hold to where Lucy is perched on the deck and Desmond is going through what remains of the cabins in the rear end of the ship. "It's on the side of the container, though, might not be recent."

"I think I got something more recent," Desmond calls back. "I found the mail."

Clay lifts his head, confused. The mail? Quickly tugging the cask under his arm, he begins clambering up the slanted, broken staircase and to the hole-ridden deck, where Lucy is leaning onto what remains of the broken mast. Everything smells of rotten wood – it's like a wet barn, but _salty_.

Desmond is leaning on the wall beside the door of what Clay assumes is the captain's cabin, easing open a packet of cloth. "What's that?" Clay asks, setting the cask of tobacco down where it hopefully won't roll into the ocean.

"Mail," Desmond says, easing open the knots on the string holding the packet together. "It's a sailing ship – if they know their business they all wrap their mail in sailcloth to keep it from being water-damaged. The log books and maps were all useless, though – I guess they were out when the ship crashed and no one tried to preserve them."

Clay arches a brow at that. If they _know their business?_

"You know about sailing ships?" Lucy asks.

"Another ancestor?" Clay asks warily. It's been at least a couple of months for Desmond since Black Room from what he can tell. All the time in the world for a foray into the past, into another ancestor… into another breaking point.

"Yeah, Ratonhnhaké:ton – he did a bit of sailing every now and then. One of the more enjoyable bits of his life, really, sailing the _Aquila_ ," Desmond answers and takes out a letter from the parcel, looking it over. "This looks – new," he mutters.

Clay carefully makes his way over to Desmond, listening to the creak and crack of wood underfoot. Desmond makes space on the wall where he's leaning on, and hands the letter over to him without complaint, taking out another instead.

Clay turns the letter in his fingers, ignoring how his fingers gleam and send reflections of gold onto the paper. Well, here's a piece of history if there ever was one. A letter of thick old paper, sealed with melted wax – the signet pressed on it says nothing to him, neither do the names inscribed on the envelope. There's a name for destination though. Some estate in Havana.

Curious, Clay cracks the seal open and then takes the sheet of the letter out. He can't recognise more than few words of it – he knows enough Italian to figure out the basic sentence structure and the feminine and masculine particles, but that's about it. There is a date on the top though. _Aveiro, 13 de março de 1714._

"March the 13th, 1714," Clay says.

"March 15th, March 11th…" Desmond agrees, shuffling through the letters. "I'm guessing that's when this ship left Portugal."

"So, safe to say it's sometime around 1714," Lucy says, slowly easing her way over the broken deck and to them.

"Could be 1715," Clay says, casting her a glance. "It takes months to cross the Atlantic with a sailing ship like this, and we don't know how long this ship has been here."

"Schooner this neat could make the trip in less than two months. And judging by the state of the wreck it's been crashed here for just few months, five at most," Desmond says, lowering the letters and looking at the ship. "She's lucky she's propped up on rocks, otherwise she would've been washed off long time ago."

Clay looks at him, arching a brow. "Well look at you, all confident on your oceanic knowledge," he says wryly. "Any chance we can repair her, _captain_?"

Desmond snorts and shakes his head, turning back to the letters. "No – the keel's broken in two and the bow has a hole you could ride a horse through. She's pretty much beyond saving, now."

Lucy sighs and leans onto the wooden railing, looking at the ship's broken deck. "Maybe we can build a raft?" she suggests. "There's plenty of wood, some of it's even dry."

"Yeah, that's a wonderful idea," Clay scoffs. "Let's just sail into the Atlantic on a bit of driftwood; I'm sure nothing will go wrong."

Desmond hums, looking up too. "We could build a raft, yeah. Maybe even put together an actual boat, if we manage to find tools. Or make them," he agrees. "There's enough sailcloth back at the camp to rig up some sails too. But without knowing where we are, or which way to go…"

"Well, I'm sorry I said anything then," Lucy mutters and looks away.

Desmond makes a face at that, casting a look at Clay who rolls his eyes, uncaring.

"We should salvage what we can here anyway," Desmond says with a sigh and takes the letter from Clay's hands, tucking it back in with the others, wrapping them all up again. "Just in case."

"Yeah," Clay says and leans his head back. "A deserted island in the early 18th century, Desmond. Seriously?"

"Could be worse – and it's what adventure novels are made of, right?" Desmond says with a slight smile while winding the hemp string around the parcel again.

"You gotta be joking."

Lucy lets out a laugh. "Well, if nothing else, you weren't so wrong with that pirate comment," she says. "1714, 1715… that's the end of the War of the Spanish Succession – and the start of the period of piracy in Caribbean, you know."

"Jesus," Clay mutters and runs a hand over his face. "Desmond, you are the worst. Whoever chose you to be a momentary god chose _poorly_."

"Thanks," Desmond says dryly and shoves the packet of re-wrapped letters into the waist of his jeans to keep it on him. "Come on, let's see what we can salvage here."

* * *

 

Their haul of the ship is mostly crap. Boxes, crates, some barrels which will maybe hold water, some more sailcloth and rope, hammocks, some knickknacks from the captain's cabin which Desmond salvages carefully, couple of kegs of gunpowder which are gonna be fun to have around person like Daniel Cross if he ever comes around again…

No food or water though.

Working next to Lucy Stillman in getting everything out of the ship is – is something. Desmond seems to be not entirely oblivious to the tension there, and puts himself between them whenever he can - but he's not always there and Clay is left accepting another box of stuff from Lucy up in the shipwreck and it takes effort to not let them just crash onto the ground.

Before dying, Clay had made his peace with Lucy, as much as he could. Giving up on life made grudges seem pretty pointless, and by that point he'd been just too damn worn down to _care_ anymore. She betrayed him – she was supposed to _get him out_ and he was angry about it, but he'd just… he'd been too tired. Too tired to hate her, too tired to go on.

His death had been… painful but peaceful. Slow and quiet and bloody as he bit by bit lost blood to the walls of his cell, of the Animus room. Writing down messages for Desmond to hopefully one day read and figure out, and if not - then as a marker. _Clay was here_ scrawled all over the walls for everyone with Eagle Vision to see. No amount of bleach would erase intent.

But he hadn't just died – and where the one he'd been at the moment of his death had given up on everything, the one that _continued on_ … he persevered on the power of bitterness and injustice.

Now he's both of them, Desmond had somehow pieced the two parts of him together to make one whole person – and here's Lucy Stillman, making him want to write on the walls again.

Clay sets the box down onto the shore, looking it over. Tools, it looks like, a hammer, saw, chisels, nails, all of them wet. Desmond dived and brought them up from the hull then – the mad lunatic. The metal of the tools is rusted and the nails are pretty much melting together with rust, but at least the hammer looks usable.

Maybe they _can_ build a raft. Judging by the way Desmond is going about on the ship, he probably knows how – though how hard is it to nail pieces of wood together, anyway? Destination is the issue, direction – unless of course Desmond can also navigate by the stars… which he actually might be able to.

Desmond absorbs skills of his ancestors like he's a computer and all it takes is a push of the button to install a new program into him. Even when he was breaking apart on the Animus Island, he was more likely to bend than crack under the pressure – assimilating his ancestors, rather than becoming consumed by them. And who knows – Desmond knows the trick of the Sync Nexus and the cause of an Animus Meltdown. Maybe he's even better at handling the Bleeding Effect now.

Bleeding Effect – hah. Named such because of him, Clay Kaczmarek, loosing his mind and bleeding himself out to try and get the knowledge out of his head and into the world. Bleeding fucking effect.

There's the sound of someone dropping into the water, and Clay looks up sharply to see Lucy coming towards him, trying to walk along the rocks rather than wade in the water. "That's all of it," she says, looking at their haul of goodies. "Everything else is pretty much nailed down."

"Right," Clay says, wary, keeping the pile of stuff between them. Desmond is still on the ship, examining the cannons, it looks like. Maybe he should go help.

"Listen," Lucy says, looking away. "I'm – I know saying I'm sorry isn't going to change anything. I am, though, and I want you to know that… that I am."

Clay glances at her. "Yeah, it doesn't change shit," he says. Especially an apology as crappy as that one – though the fact that she's trying at all, that's interesting. Her saying _no_ to Cross was interesting too. Suspicious, but interesting.  Having a little crisis of conscience there, huh, Miss Stillman?

"I… don't know why Desmond brought me back," Lucy says quietly. "I know you probably don't think I deserve it, but… he did anyway."

She sounds just as lost to the reason as he feels. Desmond bringing _anyone_ back doesn't make any damn sense. That Desmond's last all-powerful thoughts had been full of regret, that makes sense yeah, Desmond is a man with regrets. But regretting the lives and deaths of other people, most of them his enemies? Regretting them badly enough to rewrite a bit of the universe to bring them back?

Lucy had manipulated Desmond, and from what they'd seen of Cross it looks like the man had at least tried to kill Desmond – and Clay doesn't think he'd exactly made best friends with the guy either. They're all in their own ways _very_ uncomfortable acquaintances of Desmond Miles. And still…

Can resurrection from death be called _saving_?

The way Desmond Miles thinks doesn't make any goddamn sense.

"I don't know what's going to happen," Lucy says. "But I'm going to try and do my part for Desmond. I know you probably don't like that, but – "

"Stop putting my thoughts into my head," Clay snaps. "You don't know shit, Stillman. And I'm several months past my grave and all the fucks I ever gave about what you thought _I_ should or shouldn't think. So I will thank you kindly to _fuck off_."

Lucy presses her lips shut, looking conflicted and torn. "… Alright," she says then, and just like that, turns away.

Clay scowls after her. Really? Really, it's that easy for her? As he watches, she walks to a nearby pile of rocks and boulders rising from the sand, sitting down on the driest one. She doesn't look at him, looking at the shipwreck instead, her eyes first on Desmond on the deck before they slide down, to stare at the waves.

Clay scoffs, and turns to rummage through their new stuff.

To her, it must be like she just died and woke up. Must've been one hell of a shock.

Fuck if he cares.

"I think we can probably use most of the planks of the deck," Desmond says, after coming down finally. "Though taking them down from the ship isn't going to be easy. Those planks aren't exactly light. Still, if it comes to it, they might make a good enough raft, as long as they don't get too waterlogged."

"Sounds like great fun," Clay mutters and leans his head back, peering up at the sky. It's still light out, but the sun is starting to get lower on the horizon. "Fun activity for the whole family in the unlikely case we don't _starve_ in the meanwhile."

"Are you hungry?" Desmond asks, tiling his head.

Clay scowls. Hell if he knows – bodily sensations are kind of new. His stomach does hurt a bit, so he might be. "Maybe."

"We could definitely use some water," Lucy says, hugging one knee to her chest as she watches them. "Did you find a stream or anything when you were looking around?"

Desmond frowns, taking off his backpack and taking out his water bottle, handing it over to Clay. Clay looks it over dubiously – it might very well be the first and maybe the last bottle of perfectly clean, probably chlorinated water in the world. It's also made of plastic.

They've brought plastic into early 18th century. And smartphones too, never mind whatever else the others have. Clay's pockets are all empty – it wasn't as if Abstergo wanted to give him any toys, especially not after he started using steak knives to cut himself. Lucy had some stuff though – Desmond had plastic bags and shit. And who knows what Cross has.

If people of this time could figure out even a fraction of what they'd brought in and actually make use of it… well that'd be a whole timeline _gone_ , right there, wouldn't it?

Clay takes a sip of the water – it tastes a bit like _revolution_.

"Let's go take some of this to the camp and set up shop there," Desmond suggests, motioning to the stuff they'd taken off the wreck. "And then we can use the last light to look for a stream or pond or something."

"Great plan, truly, stellar leadership," Clay mutters.

"Well, I don't hear you pitching in suggestions," Desmond said flatly. "Please, feel free to suggest a better plan, Clay, I'm all ears."

"No, no, I'm with you – by all means, let's go live in the Dead Man's Camp," Clay says and puts the cap back into the bottle, handing it over to Desmond. "Surrounded by all those bushes and trees and all the lovely little hiding places when the night comes and Cross comes to kill us all."

"You don't know that he will," Desmond says.

"You don't know that he _won't_. We have no damn idea what the guy's been doing or where he is or what he's planning."

Desmond sighs with annoyance and takes a drink of the water before holding the bottle out to Lucy. "Fine, you stay here with the stuff, set up a new camp or whatever," he says then. "And I'll go out looking for water and Cross too, if I can find him. And then we can figure what we do next."

Clay scoffs while Lucy takes a careful drink – already, a good third of the water is gone, just like that. "Fuck," he says and runs hands through his hair, looking at the barrels. They got containers, they got sand aplenty – if they can get food going that'd be a source of charcoal…

"Fine, okay. I'll fix us a fire," Clay says and crouches down to examine the sand. "I think I can set up a filter system in case you do find water – maybe we can make it actually safe for drinking. Also, grab that pan from the Dead Man's Camp on your way back if you can. And some of the bottles, too." If they didn't find any fresh water, then they'd have to distil seawater, after all. With a pan and some bottles… Clay is pretty sure he could do it.

Desmond looks at him with surprise and then nods. "Yeah, alright, I'll get them on my way back," he says and then looks at Lucy. "Um…"

"I'll, uh… I'll look around here, see if I can find something we can eat or at least use," Lucy offers.

"Do you even know what plants here are edible?" Clay asks warily, looking up at her

"No idea," Lucy admits. "But we won't find out if we don't at least look, right?"

"Great," Desmond says. "That's great. I guess we'll just get to it, then. We'll meet up here before the night falls, alright?"

Clay smothers a snort and then watches Desmond head off into the bush, backpack back on his shoulder. What a great leader they have, he muses as Lucy awkwardly follows Desmond, heading out in a slightly different direction. Then Clay looks at the haul from the shipwreck, all the boxes and barrels and general crap, and sighs.

Well, Desmond had gotten them started, that's something. Saved them and got them moving. And if it's not Desmond, then who? Lucy? _Cross_? Clay himself?

Clay looks at his hands, at the metal staining his fingertips, shining veins snaking down from them and over his palm and to his torn wrists, every bit of mostly self-inflicted hurt covered in precious metal. He can't even imagine the blood anymore, how it covered his hands, how he smeared it everywhere. The gleam of the gold seems to be almost overpowering the memory.

Clay can see where Lucy is coming from, hitching her rather bipolar wagon in Desmond's caravan all of a sudden. _Do her part_ indeed. They're good three hundred years in the past and have no place to go, no people to help them and nothing to do. What else are they going to do, really, at this point?

Desmond had taken broken, destroyed things and lovingly patched them up with gold – and then dropped them all in a place where their part in the war was no longer applicable, freeing them of all their vows and obligations and duties.

Yeah. Clay is bound to follow his stupid sentimental ass to the ends of the Earth now too, isn't he?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild warning of a dead body in advanced state of decomposition. Also hunting and killing of an animal for food purposes.

Fuck, the shaking has already started.

Daniel crouches behind some rocks, leaning back to their rough surface, trying to keep himself from rocking back and forward. It doesn't help – he knows it doesn't help. Self-soothing behaviours, a distraction method, something to lull his mind into the false sense of security – they make you feel better, but they don't do _shit_ to the underlying cause. As if rocking back and forth like a fucking infant is going to fix anything.

"Shit," Daniel mutters, scrabbling at the fucking thing on his neck. He can't feel it, but he can at the same time – a brand, burning on his skin, even worse than the fucking tattoo. Vidic didn't let him get it removed - _Daniel, hiding our demons will never make them go away,_ he says, _we must confront our fears and surpass them – not cover them up. We're not children, after all, hiding out messes under the rug… are we?_

The bastard had branded him. Branded him again – killed him and cut him open and branded him like a fucking cattle and he can't even see the damn thing. He tried on a still pool of water he found, he tried to see it, but the most he could see was the flicker of gold on his temple, more familiar, and a hint of something gleaming on his shoulder – but he can't _see_ what the fucker did to him.

Fuck, the shaking is bad this time. He tries to reach back to scratch at the under-the-skin-itch on his neck where the brand is, but he keeps missing, his fingers tangling in the collar of his shirt, he can't – he can't fucking _concentrate_.

He doesn't have his fucking meds.

Why the fuck did he pack _syringes_ and _fucking IV line_ but doesn't have his fucking meds to actually administer? In his pockets there's a fucking med kid and gauze, he has a tourniquet kit, for fuck's sake, but not a single phial, not a bottle, not a fucking sheet of pills, fucking – nothing –

"Shit," Daniel mutters, gritting his teeth and bowing his head down, to his knee, grinding his forehead against it. His spine feels tight, like something wants to burst right through it. "Focus. Focus, focus, fucking сфокусируйся _…_ "

This is worse than a mission – he can't lose it now. He's stranded in what isn't even enemy territory – it's no-man's land, a _dead man's_ land. He needs to – he needs to –

 _… you'll have no backup, friend. When you go out there, you go alone_ …

"Shut up," Daniel growls at the voice. He can feel his clothing clinging to his skin, it's fucking sweltering here and he cannot deal with this shit right now. "Shut the fuck up. You're dead. Fuck _off_ , Kolya, ты мёртв."

The voices keep mumbling in the back of his head, though, playing out the dialogue of men long since dead, discussing events that have lost their meaning years ago. Daniel tries to ignore it for a moment but fuck – there's nothing to dull it. They just keep droning on.

Shit.

He gets up, pushing away from the rocks where he'd taken cover. At least this shithole of an island is helping a little with grounding – no palm trees in fucking Russia. Taking a moment to breathe and steady himself, Daniel sets out again, squeezing his hands into fists, ignoring the way his wrists feel like they're convulsing. On his back, the brand Miles left on him _burns_.

Vidic didn't give him meds, not after New York. _The impact to the head with the Artefact seems to have changed things,_ he'd heard them say behind closed doors, their voices muffled and their features awash in red. _Call it a cognitive recalibration. Some of his neurons are connecting in new ways – it bears further study…_

Fuck – Vidic said it was for his own good, better to let the process run its course than to tamper it with medicine and probably make it worse, but – fuck. Fuck them. All the fucking _cognitive recalibration_ had done was make things fucking worse – and that was before the flickers started. Before one voice, a new voice, started surpassing all others.

At least she's fucking gone now, that _bitch_.

Scratching at his temple with shaking fingers, Daniel sets out into the bush. He's mapped out a good half of the island and found fucking nothing of use. A pond, a stream coming from the spring, some rocks one might use for shelter, one of them formed an alcove which could work for taking cover from rain if it came to it… Better than fucking nothing – not better than fucking _something_.

Best thing he'd found so far were some animal tracks, deer, it looked like, maybe wild pig. The island isn't big from what he's seen, few dozen square kilometres at most, if even that – but if there's animals, there might be people. People with communications devices, maybe even a way fucking _out of here_. He just needs to find them.

Needs to keep moving and –

 _You don't know what you're doing, Kolya_.

Daniel presses on, rubbing sweat from his eyes and glaring at the forest as he goes. Palm trees, ferns – wherever this is, it's tropical. Fucking Bahamas indeed – West Indies is likely, all things considered. The sun is making nearly on top of them, doing a perfect beeline from east to west – slightly slanted to the south. So, either above the equator, or in equator during winter time, or… or…

"Shit," Daniel mutters. He used to know this shit. He used to be able to figure it out. Ever since Denver though, and then after fucking New York and Miles and, "Focus. Have to focus."

It's starting to look like there are no settlements here, though. There are no footpaths aside from the few animal tracks and the forest looks wild – no one had either harvested it or examined it or even done any preservation efforts for it. Fucking nothing there, but bushes and bushes and more fucking bushes, rising towards the whopping peek of maybe 12 meters above ocean surface and even there you can't see past the fucking leaves to get any sort of lay of the land.

Stranded. Stranded on a fucking deserted island with two fucking assassins, and what looks like a traitor. Fucking _Stillman_ , the hell she was on about, staying with the Subjects? Vidic was right – she'd been compromised working with Miles – on Miles. In the newest version of the Animus.

Oh, the Animus. What Daniel wouldn't fucking do to get into it right now.

_It is beautiful, isn't it, my friend._

Fuck you.

Daniel digs his fingers into his temple, trying to force the echoes and the headache out, and keeps on moving. A plan, he thinks. He has to come up with a plan, now. Survival first. Escape next. And if that's impossible… survival until rescue. Shit. He does _not_ like relying on hopes of rescue, that shit just gets you killed. Especially with enemies around.

Fuck, no one would even know where he is, or to look for him, would they? If he'd – if Miles had really gotten to him, and if he used the power of the Artefacts to transport him – transport them _all_ – then… then there'd be no clue as to where to look for them, would there?

And Miles had done more than just transport them too. Daniel had been at Stillman's funeral – he'd seen her body go to the ground, dead and gone. And Subject 16 – Daniel had been the one to dump his carcass into the Tiber River, months ago. Miles had managed a fucking _resurrection_.

Vidic would lose his shit when he found out. It would be a blast. He just has to get out of here to deliver the news, somehow.

* * *

 

Daniel has the island mostly mapped out when he finds the body. It's not much of a one. At least three months into decomposition, all the flesh is long gone, eaten, liquefied and decomposed – there aren't even any maggots left. Some bits of dried skin, torn clothing hanging off skeletal frame and a gaping skull of a face – a hat somehow still on its weathered, fleshless head. Daniel gives the hat a dubious look – it looks like something out of a stupid pirate movie – and then checks the body over for anything useful.

There isn't much. The guy had a golden ring, a pair of hoop earrings, also gold, and a necklace of what looks like teeth and seashells, how fucking classy. There's a belt that's completely ruined and on it a sheath for a rusted up knife – and a holster for the antique firearm.

"What the actual _fuck_?" Daniel mutters, wiping sweat from his eyes as he looks the pistol over. It's a single shot flintlock pistol, or a musket rather, with wood running from the grip all the way down the barrel in a smooth curve, not even that badly damaged. Even the hammer looks about right – a little rusted on the side, but obviously the corpse took care to keep it from getting too badly damaged – before either taking a bullet from it, or just starving to death.

Scowling, Daniel pulls the hammer back, sights along the barrel and pulls the trigger. The hammer swings forward with a snap, but nothing happens – not that he really expected it to. But the trigger still works, and it works pretty smoothly – and the hammer functions as it should. Given that he got all the shit needed to load the damn thing… he now had a firearm.

That's something.

Quickly stripping the corpse of it's holster, Daniel adds the holster to his own belt and shoves the musket on it. It's a little stiff – salt water probably – but it's serviceable. Leaving the question of _what the fuck_ for later, Daniel rummages through the grounds for anything else. He finds musket balls in a little leather pouch with a metal rod attached to it, probably for loading, and another smaller pouch of little square things of flint for the flintlock, so that's something – no gunpowder though. Shit.

There is, however, a book, wrapped tightly in piece of oiled cloth, sitting right next to the man on the couple of rocks to keep it off the ground. A diary.

Written, of fucking course, in a language he doesn't speak. Daniel growls impatiently and then leafs through the pages, checking dates. _21 de maio, 1 de junho, 14 de junho_ …. Daniel quickly goes back further, all the way to the last entry. _3 de julho_ , written in messy letters – with a piece of charcoal, it looks like.

Daniel gives the dead man a dubious look. The man is severely decomposed, but enough to cover period of time from July to December?  Granted, Daniel hasn't even actually studied the art of decomposing humans under these sorts of conditions – he could point a time of death to the man if he'd found the guy frozen in block of ice or dead in the back of a damp cave, maybe, but place this wet, this hot… that throws it all off a little. Three months seems likely. Six, though…

And July of _what_?

Turning back to the book, Daniel goes through it again, ignoring the intermittent tremor of his hands as he scans the pages for a year. He finds it right at the front – the first page, the first entry. _10 de_ março de 1714

No _fucking way_.

* * *

 

Finding the others isn't hard. They aren't even trying to hide. Stillman is gathering shit from the forest like a fucking washerwoman, and Subject 16 is rigging up a fucking cooking pit on the beach by a goddamn shipwreck. Busy little bees, Daniel thinks and backs deeper into the cooler shadows under the bush – no sign of Subject 17 and it's him Daniel needs now.

Where is that asshole and what the _fuck_ did he do to them all?

Daniel waits a moment to see if Stillman and Kaczmarek have anything useful to contribute, but they're both far apart and not talking. Useless, he thinks and then sets out to track Subject 17 – which, in the end, proves much harder.

Desmond Miles, it looks like, has learned some tricks while away from Abstergo – he's not leaving tracks in the forest, not so much as a fucking footprint. Tricky asshole, Daniel thinks and sits still in the bushes for a moment, rubbing at his forehead. Fuck, he really doesn't like doing this, but while Miles can cover his tracks he can't cover his _trail_.

If he can just fucking get the shit to _work_ for him for once.

It's like having an ice pick driven through his head when his vision shifts – going from bright and green and golden into muted hues of black and white. Daniel can never figure out why the Assassins’ hallow this shit so fucking much – every time he does it, it feels like he's going numb and dumb and fucking _blind_.

But there – he can see them now. Specks of gold on the ground, footprints invisible to the naked eye – but clear with intent. Miles, walking on stones and upward roots like he's a cat and the ground is wet, making his way into the forests.

And then the vision is gone and Daniels is left blinking in the suddenly blinding sunlight, with a migraine already building up behind his eyes. Fucking useless piece of…

He sets out anyway, following the invisible track for as far as he'd seen it – and there he tries again. It takes longer this time, takes more effort – takes nearly crossing his eyes and fucking passing out from lack of breath – but he gets it out. Back to muted blacks and white and there, a trail of gold again.

By the time he finally finds Miles, he kind of wants to tear his fucking eyeballs out of his head, it _hurts to fucking much_. At least it's getting darker now with the sun setting behind the trees – the migraine is bad enough now without it glaring into his eye sockets.

Miles, the fucker, is stalking an animal. He's sitting crouched on a nearly upturned palm tree, staring down at a little white tailed deer meandering about below him. The sight of it is so damn weird that Daniel keeps his peace, watches it happen.

Miles waits, bows his head a little and then he drops – legs curled in, arm held out below him between his knee, aimed just right. Snick of a knife and then the deer falls under Miles' weight, dead on impact. It's almost graceful, how quick it happens – in and dead.

Fucking assassins – no one can make murder as sexy as _fucking assassins._ How fucked up is that.

" _Nia:wen_ ," Miles mutters, and then draws his knife away, standing up and grabbing the deer by the hind quarters, dragging it up and to a nearby rock to lay with it's head down and ass up before cutting the thing's throat open – to drain out the blood. The asshole really knows how to hunt, huh.

Fuck, that's beside the point here.

While Miles is busy with the animal, Daniel moves in. He intends to just get behind Miles and put the musket to the back of his head – nothing in it to fire, maybe, but a gun is an effective threat, as long as no one but you knows it’s useless.

Miles spots him before he does, tilting his head, and then moving. Daniel is prepared for it, and when Miles goes for a leg sweep he jumps out of the way, keeping his footing – and his gun aimed at Miles. "Freeze, asshole, or I'll put a hole in your head."

The asshole freezes obligingly enough, still crouched down and his hands on the ground for support – he'd been about to launch up, try and tackle him maybe, but he holds still, looking up warily. "Cross," Miles says, looking at the gun.

"What the fuck did you do to us?" Daniel demands and while the guy makes a face at him, he digs the journal he found and throws it at Miles. "Look at the fucking date on the first page. What the fuck did you do?"

Miles sighs at that and leans back to sit on his heels rather than on his knees. "You know, if you'd stuck around you would've figured it out along with the rest of us," he says. "Yeah, we're back in time."

"Why?" Daniel demands, keeping the musket aimed at his head. "What's here, why here?"

"I have no idea," Miles says. "It wasn't exactly intentional."

The fuck is that supposed to mean? Daniel scowls at the Assassin and then winces as the thing on his temple _twists_ and for a moment there he sees Miles in the Assassin regalia, hood and belt and all. He's someone else under them. Fuck, not now, he thinks and forcibly keeps himself from reaching for his head. "You killed me," Daniel says, trying to keep clear head. "I should _kill_ you."

Miles draws a breath, keeping his eyes on Daniel.

 _We work in the shadows to serve the light_.

"What will that get you?" Miles asks warily. "We're all stranded here, Cross. What do you gain from killing me in this situation?"

Some fucking peace of mind, Daniel thinks, and the musket shakes in his hand. "You _did_ something to me," he accuses him. The artefact, the fucking _cognitive recalibration_ bullshit, neurons firing like they hadn't in years, and now this, _now fucking this,_ "Branded me like a fucking _dog_ – "

Miles bows his head a little. "I _healed_ you. I brought you back."

_You've come back to us, Daniel. Well done -_

"Well I didn't fucking _ask for it_!" Daniel shouts, his vision bleeding – black, white, blue, _gold_. "Always doing things I don't ask for –  что дает тебе право – who the fuck do you think you are to –"

Miles launches at him then, catching Daniel's solar plexus with his shoulder and taking him down – and Daniel is so fucking shaky with the withdrawal and migraine that he can't even try to break the fall. His head hits the ground with a sharp crack and his vision blows into a starburst of white sparks – there's a fucking _rock_ he thinks, he hit his head on a fucking _rock_ -

Miles takes the musket from him, checks it, and then throws it onto the ground. "It's not even loaded, you asshole," he mutters and then looks down. "Cross?"

Everything is going black around the edge and what fucking right Miles has to look fucking _worried_ now -

"F-fuck you," Daniel grunts, tries to get up. Everything spins and there's a flash of heat – fuck, he's so fucking _sweaty_ under his clothes, too many damn layers. The world is tilting from side to side like he's on a boat rocked by the ocean and his head, it hurts so goddamn much and -

Daniel leans away, and throws up.

"Holy shit," Miles mutters over the sound of retching and if Daniel could get the angle, he'd try and stick a knife into the bastard. It's all he can do to keep himself propped up, though, leaning away from his own clothing to keep from  splashing himself with his own vomit. Not that there's much of it – his stomach is damn near empty and what comes up is mostly bile, burning his throat and mouth and making him gag twice as hard.

There's a hand on him, running over his back hesitantly and then, "Shit, your head," Miles mutters and roots around his hair. Daniel tries to elbow him off, but it almost sends him crashing to the ground, and in the end Miles gets at the back of his head unhindered, parting his hair and checking the injury. "Oh fuck, Cross, I'm _sorry_."

"Fuck you," Daniel grunts and breathes in and out, still shuddering with the gagging reflex, but there's nothing more to throw up – he's all emptied out. "Блядь," he grunts and pushes away from the bile, away from Miles. "Get off me, asshole – "

"Here," Miles answers and holds something out to him. A bottle of water. Daniel glares at it and then grabs it, leaning back to sit on his knees to drink.

Miles says nothing as he rinses his mouth, spits, and then drains the bottle empty. There's blood on the guy's fingers – from the animal or from Daniel's head, he's not sure, he doesn't care.

Daniel makes to throw the bottle away, but Miles holds out his hand for it, palm up, open – knifeless. Why that gives him a pause, he's not sure, but it does and though the petty part of Daniel makes him almost crumble the plastic bottle in hand and throw it into the bush, he doesn't. He hands it over instead.

"The fuck are we here for?" Daniel asks. "Miles, what the fuck is this?"

Miles puts the cap back into the bottle slowly, looking it over and then shoving it into his backpack. "I just wanted to get away," he says quietly. "And I think I wanted to… make things better for us. I don't know."

Daniel stares at him dubiously. Is he for fucking real? "Why?" he demands. "Why the fuck did you bring _me_ along?"

Miles shrugs, looking at him and then looking away. "I've seen your file," he says then. "No one deserves that."

"You got no fucking right to tell me what I do or don't deserve," Daniel snaps. He has no fucking right to pity him either – he doesn't know _shit_ about what Daniel's gone through.

"Yeah, probably not," Miles agrees and stands up with a sigh. "There's nothing I can do to fix this, though. The power I used to get us here, it's gone." He looks at his right hand, the burned one and shakes his head again. "Killing me won't change that. I'm sorry."

"Shit," Daniel answers and reaches to check the back of his head. It's tender, he definitely got one hell of a blow – but it's nowhere near tender enough to be cracked. Bleeding a little but it's already starting to clot. He's gotten it worse. "If you can't change this, then you're fucking useless."

"I got us food," Miles says and turns to the animal. "That's something, right?"

Daniel eyes him suspiciously, glancing at the animal. He had taken an animal down successfully, true enough. And judging by what he'd done after, he knows how to deal with the dead animal too, afterwards. That is… _something_.

"Now we just need to find water and we're all set to survive at least for now," Miles mutters, nudging at the dead deer and checking it's neck. It's almost done sluggishly bleeding now.

Daniel scowls, slowly easing his feet under him, first one and then other, before trying to stand up. He's dizzy, and his sense of balance is shot to hell – but he manages to stand up. "I found a spring," he mutters almost resentfully. "Half a click east from here."

Miles looks at him, taking him in. "… that's _great_. Do you think you could show me?"

Daniel spits at the ground and glares at him. That easy, huh? Vidic had said that Subject 17 was a gullible fool, but _seriously_.

Fuck it, Daniel thinks and turns to the wood. "Yeah. This way."

Miles hesitates before crouching down to the ground – hauling the deer up and to his shoulders, angling it's head so that as it bleeds, it won't bleed on his clothes. "Let's go," he says, and apparently that's that.

So at least he's a practical gullible fool.

Daniel can work with that.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In Another Universe (Maybe We Were Happy.)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14802149) by [CescaLR](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CescaLR/pseuds/CescaLR)




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